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Japan's Dual Currency Proposal: A Slippery Slope

Terrible proposal, you only need to look at the most recent 'stimulus spending' to see how disastrously allocated it had been. Why does none of these Keynesians EVER look at the debt side?

You can cheat your maths teachers but not maths principles.

Another, Better Way of Looking at This Market

Instead of charts you should maybe have a look at some figures i.e. fundamentals. I would not go long into anything until after this summer of political turmoil.

Will China Have to Choose Between Social Stability and Long-Term Growth?

Banks seem to be on the receiving end of policy again. Remember them being 'forced' to lent to SOEs during the restructuring, even to those that were likely not to repay the loan. In the end the final bill came in at around 300 billion if I remember correctly but the Chinese had a large enough surplus to cover that.
I wonder if similar thinking is going on again, they're full out trying to get the domestic economy going up and with such an historical background it is a definite possibility that they're choosing this option again.
However, even though it may impact long-term growth it is not going to be nearly as disastrous as the effects on America or Japan who chose a different way out of it. Imo they're trying to grow out the unhealthy loans that are inevitable now.
Where's the credit nowadays going? Wasn't it in huge parts to real estate before whilst now it's moving to companies?

A Government Bailout for the Average American

"Boston alone, says the Boston's Globe, is planning to cut 900 education jobs"

So the teachers that have been fired will be renewing the classrooms they no longer work in with modern equipment and make sure they're energy-efficient.
Wonderful. Ayn Rand couldn't make that up.

Stimulus Bill: Half Pork?

What's funny is that whilst most people add a multiplier effect when accounting for the extra spending that the stimulus is supposed to bring, they neglect the multiplier effect on debt. How much does America spend on interest alone each year and where will that figure be ten years from now?

The Real Crisis: Collapsing Capital Accumulation Process

Well, half the world lives in poverty because their governments are f***** useless. Poorly educated workforce combined with bad regulations and bad investment return is a lethal combination.
China's done very well in abolishing poverty, the number of poor people actually did increase slightly in India recently (same number as in Sub-Saharan Africa and how can it be to get people to live on more than ONE dollar a day??!?!), together India and SSA account for most of the world's poor people. A fair few countries in Latin America are doing well and other Asians such as Vietnam seem to get an track, so the picture's not too bleak.

Bill Mandating 25% of U.S. Energy from Renewables by 2025 Introduced in House

Why don't they legislate sunshine all year round?

The Doomsday Argument, Market Version

"The argument is ordinarily used to posit that we are closer to Doomsday than we know."

To make it more succint doomsday doesn't come knocking "Oh, hey time's up, gotta go through this, it's your turn..."
Time is quite simply irrelevant, what matters is cause. Time can't be causal as it does not change the way society is run. In fact you could make a good argument that with each passing day the doomsday scenario becomes less probable as learning and capability increases.

The Doomsday Argument, Market Version

I don't see how this has anything to do with markets to be blatantly honest. The only thing determining markets and GDP growth is business. What drives business is work-force, education level, entrepreneurship and a decent government. As long as these are given there a doomsday scenario is way off.
The US provides to biggest chunk to global GDP figures, should it fall by 'only' ten percent it would India and Argentina would have to double their respective economies to make up for the loss.
Global GDP rise is based on sound government first and foremost as most people throughout the world could be so much more productive and contributing if only the business environment was better, but that's a topic for another day.

Obama's Stimulus Plan: It's All About the Framing

One way to look at it is to say that the stimulus plan itself is non-sense so any further analysis does not make sense it's already non-sense. You can't improve non-sense. If you're heading the wrong way it does not matter how you're driving. I totally agree on this one by the way.
However, another way to look at this is to say that if someone's doing a job he believes in he might aswell do it properly. I'm no fan of the 'stimulus-package' but if they're going on with it they really might aswell make the best effort possible.

Is Baltic Dry Index Pointing to a Recovery?

The way I see it is that the BDI was tremendously low and is now moving to some sort of normalcy, whilst it increased 10-fold the basis from where it started was just a short-term over-reaction. Eventually shipping rates will have to move to cover costs (I presume levels such as low as most recently are not sustainable). Short term a loss can definitely hit them (South Korea's exports tumbles by about 40% accoring to an article published here today) but the BDI is a real-world based index thus it has to correct to a 'normal' level (i.e. covering costs), there's only so long a business is viable by offering rates that cover its variable costs. A further rise seems very likely, 2000 looks like a fair mid-term level but the chart unfortunately only goes back to 2003.

On Feb 03 01:22 PM Mark Anthony wrote:

> Yamu:
>
> You don't expect the BDI index to double or surge 10 fold overnight,
> do you? It takes time for anything to move. The BDI has been surging
> up for 11 consecutive days now, each day up strongly 5%, 10% or even
> 20%. That is a very strong move and very indicative of where we are
> going. I don't expect anything better.

Is Baltic Dry Index Pointing to a Recovery?

BDI at such a low level was unsustainable, eventually it had to move upwards to a normal level, the question is by how much. I wouldn't interpret too much into that move.

Obama's Stimulus Plan: It's All About the Framing

Fair play but another argument would be that the benefit is so incremental that the tax cut isn't even perceived which means that even though the money will be spent, the rest of the income will be saved even more as the outlook remains negative and is not influenced by that little amount.

Obama Begins Jawboning Campaign with Chinese President Hu

Include geopolitics in your analysis and you will understand why it's Spain and not the US.

Bail Out the Future, Not the Past

Have to say that whilst this sounds nice experience and history shows that no matter how huge a bubble people will be back to their habits soon, for the Open Bank that means that unless it provides more value e.g. higher interest rates it will struggle.
The ideas on education are fine but how often have they been trotted out in the past decades and what has happened? The thing that should worry anyone, even the white-collar workers, is that China is continously crouching up the value-chain and improving the education of its workforce, you may not be affected by it now, but could be in ten years when you're fully engaged in a family and paying off a mortgage...